It's as predictable as corrupt politicians. It begins a week before Thanksgiving break and ends sometime in early January. Not all kids experience Hallmark holidays with smiling relatives and June Cleaver icons running around dishing out gravy and marveling over their new hand warmers under the Christmas tree.
Holidays bring out dump truck loads of emotions in kids at school. Sometimes they get shuffled from mixed family setting to mixed family setting. Sometimes absentee dads randomly show up or don't show up at all. Sometimes absentee Disney land dad shows up with an armful of presents and disappears shortly afterward. Sometimes mom or dad's recent or latest partner shows up. Even in the most functional of families, holidays can be a reminder of who is not there: a recently deceased grandparent or sibling overseas in the military. Sometimes, especially in this economy, there's not enough money to buy all the stuff TV land wants you to buy.
When you throw a little substance abuse into the mix, things get even more complicated. Seems like most families have at least one alcoholic relative. Sometimes the entire event whether it be Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year's is one long drinking event. More than one kid has told me they'd rather go to school than stay home.
Teachers and other school staff see the end results of this angst in their classrooms. A friend of mine told me about two girls fighting in the cafeteria of a school she works in. One threw her taco salad (a subconscious rejection perhaps?). She was surprised. I wasn't. In another school I was about to enter a middle school classroom to get kids for a yoga group when a girl leaving the classroom in tears nearly knocked me over. Yoga that day turned out to be a conflict resolution session.
People under stress go to their default or survival strategies. Middle schoolers with few skills will resort to basic defensive strategies unless somebody takes the time to teach them something different. In the next few weeks I am going to provide some mental health tips to help you manage those roller coaster emotions of childhood and adolescence.
No comments:
Post a Comment